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People should be free to choose what is best for themselves as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others to do the same. I created this blog to discuss issues I have with big government, liberal media,and to talk about my support for capitalism and the Iraq War.
7 comments:
Well, the administration clearly felt that this policy was working so well for sex education that they should try expanding it to other subjects. Makes sense.
Holocaust is historical-
Sex Ed- not so much.
You do see the difference right?
My formal response can be found here.
History of Holocaust = a bunch of facts that are probably importnat for students to know.
Sex Ed = a bunch of facts that are DEFINITELY important for students to know.
So not really.
Public schools teach students the basics of education. Reading, writing, math, and some history. Sex education is a moral/political issue. Many parents have different views on what should be taught about sex ed. Whether it should be abstenence only or the benefits of condoms. You never hear parents argue about how to present their child information on how to read or write. So I think we can agree their are fundamental pieces of information that all parents are comfortable with being taught. Life changing historical events has always been one of them. But in todays society we have become so afraid to upset particular cultures that we do not want to discuss some of these life changing historical moments. That is scary to me that teachers are willing to brush aside discussion of these events in order to not hurt someones feelings.
What Sex education information is to be taught is decided upon by local school boards. Now if a commuinity wants to get together and take out Holocaust discussion from the curriculum that is one thing. But teachers being afraid of offending some children so they make the decision on their own not to teach it is not right.
I know I went off there but let me say this.
The Holocaust and Crusades are taught in all history textbooks. There is some universal truth to them. Sex ed can be differnet from school to school. Hence it is not the same thing.
Hello Diatribe, My name is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and I have been perusing your blog with great interest recently. This is a good blog, much better than the two blogs from Iraq your President Bush claims to read. (We all know he can't actually read, but I digress).
I just have one correction to make to your latest post. In it you state that "The Holocaust and Crusades are taught in all history textbooks. There is some universal truth to them." Well, we can debate this all day long, but the ACTUAL truth is that the holocaust did not happen. If you were to travel to the great country of Iran (I hear their president is even offering discounts to Americans!!!) and ask any of the free citizens they would tell you that the holocaust is something the jews made up. This is really an elementary fact. I am surprised that you were unaware of this.
I just felt that I needed to clear up your facts for you. May God bless you.
Yeah, you should be very careful when you say 'sex ed is a moral issue' or 'sex ed varies from school to school'. You're trying to blur the line between the empirical facts taught in a sex-ed course and the political/moral debate around sex in general. However, that distinction is real- students can be taught facts about sex in school with no moral or political overtones.
I could easily use your same method against history class- there's plenty of politics and morality involved in the holocaust, or the rise and fall of communism, or any other historical event. But there are also simple facts about history (which by the way are much harder to empirically validate than the facts taught in sex ed classes, since they happened in the past), and those facts are what schools should be teaching.
The parralels between hostory and sex ed here are exact. In each case, there are certain empirical facts which are a part of the school curriculum. In one case, a few right-wingers tried to get some of those facts removed from the curriculum, and succeeded. In the other case, a few left-wingers tried to get some of those facts removed from the curriculum, and succeeded.
Now, here's where I see the differences between the two inyour argument. In the case of sex-ed,the right-wingers argue that ALL students will be damaged by attending a sex-ed class, and therefore it should be banned. In the history case, the left-wingers say only MINORITIES will be hurt by hearing about some parts of history, but we're removing it from everyone's currciculum anyway. You see this as a symptom of a trend in our culture to protect minorities, and that's fine as far as it goes.
However, I see a larger picture here: in each case, a small, vocal, politically extreme group is saying that something in the curriculum is bad for students, and is getting stuff removed from the curriculum despite having no evidence it will hurt anyone and witout the majority opinion on these matters enterig into the discussion. I don't see these groups as libberals protecting minorities on one side and conservatives repressing sexuality on the other side; I see them as two very similar groups, both trying (and succeeding) to alter the curriculum of our public schools based on their nutty extremist beliefs. I see these two groups as in pretty much the same boat as the people trying to prevent evolution being taught in schools.
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